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On December 20 2017 04:15 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2017 03:27 Big J wrote:On December 20 2017 02:44 TheDwf wrote:On December 19 2017 19:41 Big J wrote:My "favorite" plan of the new government must still be to grant people from South Tyrol of Austrian- and Ladin-decent citizenship. They don't know how to do it, where to get the data from, which is the actual criterion for descendancy and Italy from left to right is pretty pissed about it. But hey, it's a matter of heart for the FPÖ. Bring em home.  Shall they reclaim all the lost possessions of the House of the Habsburg and reestablish the « Austria Est Imperare Orbi Universo » motto too? + Show Spoiler + I blame the French. A solid answer for any problem in the world: http://brilliantmaps.com/every-country-invaded-france/Show nested quote +You guys had to become all liberal and democratic and take everyone down with you. We even sent you an expert on socialeconomic matters to fix your problems, but no, you didn't want to listen to Marie Antoinette!
You should have just eaten cake and shut up about the bread prices. Who likes bread anyways? It's just because of your baguette fetish!
And then you had to take Germany down with you, spread your liberte, egalite, fraternity everywhere. You knew very well how easily they can be influenced. Marx and the fucking SPD completely wrecked the German bourgeoise. It's gonna take centuries until we have them under control again...
But we can finally rejoice, austria has a chancellor in Marie Antoinette's spirit again, who understands the current problems: "If you are too poor to rent, just buy property!"
He's going to fix your mistakes! Hahaha did he really say that?
The actual quote was: "For young people property is the best measure to prevent old-age poverty."
It's a typical catch all quote for a conservative party. Tell the people how to live, state something obvious, propagate capitalism and fire against socialist housing, put fear of the future into the people and propagate one of their measures for decreased taxation for your first property (i.e. give rich investor familites a way to reduce their taxation and pretend "everyone could do it and everyone who is young will profit").
In this case, they got quite some flak for its stupidity in the context of extreme price growths on the housing market, that everyone is aware of.
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Advocating for ownership of private property, especially housing as a prevention of old age poverty or social ills is absolutely horrible. We should look to encourage cooperative living for the elderly, urbanisation instead of doing the whole suburban sprawl thing. Much better outcomes and use of resources.
That was actually one positive accident of the fact that Germans had a low net wealth after the wars and low housing supply. The government encouraged higher density housing and condos. Vienna is a good example of this too, largely because of the 'red vienna' period
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On December 20 2017 07:08 Nyxisto wrote:
Advocating for ownership of private property, especially housing as a prevention of old age poverty or social ills is absolutely horrible. We should look to encourage cooperative living for the elderly, urbanisation instead of doing the whole suburban sprawl thing. Much better outcomes and use of resources.
That was actually one positive accident of the fact that Germans had a low net wealth after the wars and low housing supply. The government encouraged higher density housing and condos. Vienna is a good example of this too, largely because of the 'red vienna' period
Yeah, but your efficient utilitarism doesn't exist in capitalism, because capitalism isn't weighted by people or the market value of their work, but by their capital. It's not the purpose of the market to serve the people by their work or needs, but to serve the people by their capital. Since the state doesn't have a lot of capital it has to pay high prices to get something done. Enter, historically high tax quotas.
In a good (work-based) distribution situation you don't need a big state, because people get the share they worked for (and not the share they can get through having exclusive capital rights forever).
So you are stuck between a rock and a hard-place if you want social housing under this property situation, you take more taxes to buy/build at the private, profit-oriented prices, or you just let the system runaway with more and more inefficiency.
And that's the problem with social-democrats nowadays. As long as they don't concentrate their efforts on fighting the distribution situtation, their efforts lead to a situation in which a weak state that consumes all incomes fights a strong, private elite. A planned economy for the 99% that control 50% of the property, and freedom for the 1% the controls the other 50%. This doesn't turn out well in elections.
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It doesn't work with a weak state, that's true, but not many social democrats are in favour of weak states. I have no problem with a strong state, and social / public housing is completely compatible with a market economy and within our existent system. Take a country like Singapore. The government has a housing board that essentially covers the market, provides affordable housing, desegrates neighbourhoods and so forth.. It's possible, it's just a matter of policy.
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The UE forces a democratically elected government to capitulate in Greece, then claims it will defend democracy in another country... Can they be any more catastrophic with their double standards?
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On December 20 2017 22:30 TheDwf wrote:The UE forces a democratically elected government to capitulate in Greece, then claims it will defend democracy in another country... Can they be any more catastrophic with their double standards?
Sure beats the old fashion way of forcing governments to capitulate or pay back debts.
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I'm curious how we earned the honor of being the first country to have article 7 trigerred against it. We are like 5 years behind Hungary in building an "illiberal democracy", but somehow they managed to avoid the problems we are currently facing. Are they better at making their reforms look plausible? Maybe we're worse at pretending we're ready to cooperate the Comission? Or maybe everyone thought Orban is just a funny little guy who'll go away if you ignore him long enough, but now that a bigger country, less friendly toward a certain very big country is implementing his ideas, action must be taken?
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On December 20 2017 22:46 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2017 22:30 TheDwf wrote:The UE forces a democratically elected government to capitulate in Greece, then claims it will defend democracy in another country... Can they be any more catastrophic with their double standards? Sure beats the old fashion way of forcing governments to capitulate or pay back debts.
Banks > Tanks
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On December 21 2017 00:00 Sent. wrote:
I'm curious how we earned the honor of being the first country to have article 7 trigerred against it. We are like 5 years behind Hungary in building an "illiberal democracy", but somehow they managed to avoid the problems we are currently facing. Are they better at making their reforms look plausible? Maybe we're worse at pretending we're ready to cooperate the Comission? Or maybe everyone thought Orban is just a funny little guy who'll go away if you ignore him long enough, but now that a bigger country, less friendly toward a certain very big country is implementing his ideas, action must be taken?
EPP
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On December 21 2017 00:00 Sent. wrote:
I'm curious how we earned the honor of being the first country to have article 7 trigerred against it. We are like 5 years behind Hungary in building an "illiberal democracy", but somehow they managed to avoid the problems we are currently facing. Are they better at making their reforms look plausible? Maybe we're worse at pretending we're ready to cooperate the Comission? Or maybe everyone thought Orban is just a funny little guy who'll go away if you ignore him long enough, but now that a bigger country, less friendly toward a certain very big country is implementing his ideas, action must be taken?
Are the issues severe around this "independence of justice" thing?
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On December 21 2017 00:04 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2017 22:46 Plansix wrote:On December 20 2017 22:30 TheDwf wrote:The UE forces a democratically elected government to capitulate in Greece, then claims it will defend democracy in another country... Can they be any more catastrophic with their double standards? Sure beats the old fashion way of forcing governments to capitulate or pay back debts. Banks > Tanks
You just need to adopt the system in the US and just be used to entire states budgets imploding and them declaring bankruptcy. That is the main problem. The banks handed out all the loans and didn’t think “man, if they default we really don’t have a system to deal with that.”
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EPP
Yeah that may be a big factor.
On December 21 2017 00:06 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2017 00:00 Sent. wrote:
I'm curious how we earned the honor of being the first country to have article 7 trigerred against it. We are like 5 years behind Hungary in building an "illiberal democracy", but somehow they managed to avoid the problems we are currently facing. Are they better at making their reforms look plausible? Maybe we're worse at pretending we're ready to cooperate the Comission? Or maybe everyone thought Orban is just a funny little guy who'll go away if you ignore him long enough, but now that a bigger country, less friendly toward a certain very big country is implementing his ideas, action must be taken? Are the issues severe around this "independence of justice" thing?
Depends on how you define "severe". In my opinion the government definitely violated a few provisions of the Constitution, but I don't think we're at the point where the separation of powers is threatened.
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On December 21 2017 00:58 Sent. wrote:Yeah that may be a big factor. Show nested quote +On December 21 2017 00:06 TheDwf wrote:On December 21 2017 00:00 Sent. wrote:
I'm curious how we earned the honor of being the first country to have article 7 trigerred against it. We are like 5 years behind Hungary in building an "illiberal democracy", but somehow they managed to avoid the problems we are currently facing. Are they better at making their reforms look plausible? Maybe we're worse at pretending we're ready to cooperate the Comission? Or maybe everyone thought Orban is just a funny little guy who'll go away if you ignore him long enough, but now that a bigger country, less friendly toward a certain very big country is implementing his ideas, action must be taken? Are the issues severe around this "independence of justice" thing? Depends on how you define "severe". In my opinion the government definitely violated a few provisions of the Constitution, but I don't think we're at the point where the separation of powers is threatened.
It's usually better to do something about it before the separation of power goes into the dumpster, the costs tend to go up the longer you wait
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On December 21 2017 00:58 Sent. wrote:Yeah that may be a big factor. Show nested quote +On December 21 2017 00:06 TheDwf wrote:On December 21 2017 00:00 Sent. wrote:
I'm curious how we earned the honor of being the first country to have article 7 trigerred against it. We are like 5 years behind Hungary in building an "illiberal democracy", but somehow they managed to avoid the problems we are currently facing. Are they better at making their reforms look plausible? Maybe we're worse at pretending we're ready to cooperate the Comission? Or maybe everyone thought Orban is just a funny little guy who'll go away if you ignore him long enough, but now that a bigger country, less friendly toward a certain very big country is implementing his ideas, action must be taken? Are the issues severe around this "independence of justice" thing? Depends on how you define "severe". In my opinion the government definitely violated a few provisions of the Constitution, but I don't think we're at the point where the separation of powers is threatened.
If Polands courts are under control of the ruling political party, how is separation of powers not threatened?
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http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42423627
Uber is officially a transport company and not a digital service, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled.
The ride-hailing firm argued it was an information society service - helping people to make contact with each other electronically - and not a cab firm.
The case arose after Uber was told to obey local taxi rules in Barcelona.
Uber said the verdict would make little difference to the way it operated in Europe, but experts say the case could have implications for the gig economy.
An Uber spokesperson said: "This ruling will not change things in most EU countries where we already operate under transportation law.
"However, millions of Europeans are still prevented from using apps like ours. As our new CEO has said, it is appropriate to regulate services such as Uber and so we will continue the dialogue with cities across Europe. This is the approach we'll take to ensure everyone can get a reliable ride at the tap of a button."
In its ruling, the ECJ said that a service whose purpose was "to connect, by means of a smartphone application and for remuneration, non-professional drivers using their own vehicle with persons who wish to make urban journeys" must be classified as "a service in the field of transport" in EU law.
It added: "As EU law currently stands, it is for the member states to regulate the conditions under which such services are to be provided in conformity with the general rules of the treaty on the functioning of the EU."
I think it is a good decision
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So this friend of mine has a friend who got layed off for being rude towards the boss and some other employees. Never made it into the newspapers though. I wonder why? Maybe there wasn't an agenda to be pushed...
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On December 21 2017 17:54 Big J wrote:
So this friend of mine has a friend who got layed off for being rude towards the boss and some other employees. Never made it into the newspapers though. I wonder why? Maybe there wasn't an agenda to be pushed...
Did his boss also attack him physically?
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EPT![[image loading]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Europe_en_1547_par_Mister_Shek.jpg)
